The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

part of the coronation, overwhelming his subjects with the spectacle
and the symbols he had chosen.
—
Louis XVI’s coronation took place on June 11, 1775, and in the crowd
outside the cathedral that warm day was a most unlikely tourist—a
fifteen-year-old youth named Georges-Jacques Danton. He was a
student at a boarding school in the town of Troyes. His family had
come from the peasantry, but his father had managed to become a
lawyer, raising the family up into the expanding French middle class.
His father had died when Danton was three, and his mother had raised
him with the hope that Danton would continue in his father’s
footsteps, securing a solid career.
Danton was quite strange-looking, if not downright ugly. He was
unusually large for his age, with an enormous head and a rather
monstrous face. Growing up on the family farm, he had twice been
attacked by bulls, their horns splitting his upper lip and cracking his
nose. Some people found him frightening, but many were charmed by
his youthful exuberance and could ignore the face. The boy was simply
fearless, always in search of adventure, and it was his bold spirit that
attracted people to him, particularly among his classmates.
At the school he was attending, the liberal priests who ran it had
decided to award a prize to the student who wrote an essay that best
described the upcoming coronation, its necessity and meaning at a
time when France was trying to modernize itself. Danton was not the
intellectual type. He preferred swimming in the nearby river and any
other kind of physical activity. The one subject that excited him was
history, particularly ancient Rome. His favorite historical figure was
the great Roman lawyer and orator Cicero. He identified with Cicero,
who also came from the middle class. He memorized Cicero’s speeches
and developed a love for oratory. With his powerful speaking voice, he
was a natural at the art. But he was not very good at writing.
He desperately wanted to win the essay prize—it would instantly
elevate him among the ranks of fellow students. He had reasoned,
however, that the only way he could compensate for his less-than-
stellar literary skills was to witness the coronation firsthand and give a
vivid description of it. He also felt a strange affinity with the young

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king: they were not far apart in age, and both were large and
considered decidedly unhandsome.
Playing hooky to get to Reims, only eighty miles away, was just the
kind of adventure that had always attracted him. He had told his
friends, “I want to see how a king is made.” And so he had snuck off to
Reims the day before the coronation and had arrived just in time. He
moved through the throng of French people congregating outside the
cathedral. Guards brandishing tall pikes held them back. Only the
nobility was allowed inside. Danton pushed as far forward as he could,
and then he spotted the king, wearing the most spectacular ceremonial
robe encrusted with diamonds and gold, making his way up the steps.
There was the pretty queen following him in a splendid gown, her hair
piled impossibly high, followed by other members of her entourage.
From a distance, they were all like figures from another era, so
different from anybody he had ever seen before.
He waited patiently outside for the end of the ritual, at which point
the king reemerged, now sporting a crown. For a brief moment he got a
closer look at Louis’s face as he passed by, and he was surprised to find
that the king seemed quite ordinary, despite the robes and jewels. The
king then got into the most elaborate carriage imaginable, named the
Sacre. It was like something out of a fairy tale. It was built for the
coronation and designed to represent the chariot of Apollo, glistening
like the sun (the sun being the symbol of the French king), and it was
enormous. On all sides it featured gold statuettes of Roman gods. On
the door panel facing Danton, he could see an elaborate painting of
Louis XVI as a Roman emperor atop a cloud, beckoning the French
people below him. Strangest of all, the carriage itself sported a large
bronze crown.
The Sacre was meant to serve as the very symbol of the monarchy,
dazzling and mythical. It was quite a sight, but for some reason it
seemed oddly out of place—too large, too bright, and when the king got
in, it seemed to swallow him up. Was it magnificent or was it
grotesque? Danton could not decide.
Danton returned to school later that same day, his head spinning
with all of these strange images. Inspired by what he had witnessed, he
wrote his best essay yet and won the prize.
In the years after graduating from the school in Troyes, Danton
would make his mother proud. In 1780 he moved to Paris to clerk in

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the law courts. Within a few years, he passed the bar exam and became
a practicing lawyer. In court, with his booming voice and oratorical
skills, he naturally commanded attention and quickly rose through the
ranks. And as he mingled with his fellow lawyers and read the
newspapers, he detected something strange going on in France: a
growing discontent with the king, the profligate queen, and the
arrogant upper classes, whom the great thinkers of the day were
ridiculing in their plays and books.
The main problem was the country’s finances—France seemed
perpetually on the brink of running out of money. At the root of this
was France’s vastly antiquated financial structure. The French people
were subject to all kinds of onerous taxes that dated back to feudal
times, but the clergy and the nobility were largely exempt from any
such burdens. Taxes on the French lower and middle classes could
never bring in enough revenue, especially considering the lavish
expenditures of the French court, which had only gotten worse with
Queen Marie Antoinette’s elaborate parties and love of finery.
As the money supply ran short and the price of bread kept rising,
and with millions of people facing starvation, riots began to break out
throughout the countryside and even in Paris. And amid all of this
turmoil, the young king was proving to be too indecisive to handle the
pressure.
In 1787, as the financial situation worsened, the opportunity of a
lifetime came to Danton—a position as a lawyer on the King’s Council,
with a rather nice bump in salary. Wanting to marry a young woman
named Gabrielle, whose father opposed the marriage because Danton
did not earn enough, he accepted the position on the council, despite
his fears that he was joining a sinking ship. Two days later he married
Gabrielle.
Danton did his job well but found himself increasingly absorbed by
the turmoil in Paris. He joined a club called the Cordeliers. Its
members were an odd mix of bohemian artists and political agitators.
It was located near his apartment, so he began to spend a great part of
his day there, and soon he was participating in the raucous debates
about the future of France that took place at the club. He felt a strange
new spirit in the air, a boldness that made people suddenly say things
they could never have said a few years before about the monarchy. He
found it exciting and irresistible. He began to give his own fiery

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speeches, focusing on the brutality of the upper classes, and he basked
in the attention he received.
In 1788 he was offered a higher position on the King’s Council, and
he turned it down. He told the king’s minister who presented the offer
that the monarchy was doomed: “This is no longer about modest
reforms,” he said. “We are more than ever on the brink of
revolution. . . . Can’t you see the avalanche coming?”
In the spring of 1789, Louis was forced to call a national assembly to
deal with the looming bankruptcy. The assembly was known as the
Estates General. It was an institution meant to deal with a national
crisis, but always as a measure of last resort, the previous one having
been held in 1614, after the death of King Henry IV. It brought together
representatives of the three estates of France—the nobility, the clergy,
and the tax-paying commoners. Although the vast majority of French
people were to be represented by members of the Third Estate, the
power of the assembly was heavily tilted in favor of the nobility and
clergy. Nevertheless, the French people held great hopes for the
Estates General, and Louis had been extremely reluctant to call for it.
Only a month before the convening of the Estates General, riots in
Paris had broken out over the price of bread, and royal troops had shot
into the crowds, killing dozens. Danton had witnessed the bloodshed
and he felt a turning point in the mood of the people, particularly the
lower classes, and in himself. He shared their desperation and anger;
they could no longer be placated with the usual rhetoric. He began to
address the angry crowds on street corners, attracting followers and
making a name for himself. To a friend who was surprised at this new
direction in his life, he responded that it was like seeing a strong tide in
the river, jumping in, and letting it carry him where it might.
—
As he prepared for the convening of the Estates General, King Louis
could barely contain his resentment and anger. In the years since he
had become king, various finance ministers had warned him of an
impending crisis if France did not reform its tax system. He had
understood this and had tried to initiate reforms, but the nobility and
clergy, fearing where this might lead, had become so hostile to such
ideas that the king had been forced to back down. And now, with the

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state’s coffers nearly empty, the nobility and the Third Estate were
holding him hostage, making him convene the Estates General and
putting him in the position of begging for funds from his people.
The Estates General was not a traditional part of French
government; it was an anomaly, a challenge to the divine right of the
king, a recipe for anarchy. Who knew what was best for France—his
subjects, with their million different opinions? The nobility, with their
own narrow interests and hunger to grab more power? No, only the
king could navigate the nation through this crisis. He had to regain the
upper hand over these rowdy children.
The king decided upon a plan: he would impress upon them all the
majesty of the monarchy and its absolute necessity as the supreme
power in France. To do so, he would hold the Estates General at
Versailles, something his advisers warned him not to do, considering
Versailles’s closeness to Paris and all its agitators. Louis reasoned that
most of the delegates of the Third Estate came from the middle classes
and were relatively moderate. Amid the grandeur and all the symbols
of the French monarchy, the members of the Third Estate could not
help but think of what Louis XIV, the builder of Versailles, had created
and how much they owed the monarchy for transforming France into a
great power. He would hold an opening ceremony that would rival his
coronation and remind all of the estates of the divine origin of his
kingship.
Having impressed them with the weight of the past, he would then
agree to some reforms of the tax system, which the Third Estate would
certainly be grateful for. At the same time, however, he would make it
clear that under no circumstances would the monarchy or the first two
estates relinquish any of their other powers or privileges. In this way,
the government would get its necessary funds through taxes, and the
traditions he was meant to uphold would remain unchanged.
The opening ceremonies went just as he had planned, but to his
dismay the deputies of the Third Estate seemed rather uninterested in
the splendors of the palace and all of the pomp. They were barely
respectful during the religious ceremonies. They did not applaud very
warmly during his opening speech. The tax reforms he proposed were
not enough, in their eyes. And as the weeks went by, the members of
the Third Estate became increasingly demanding, its members now
insisting that the three estates have equal power.

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When the king refused to accept their demands, they did the
unthinkable—they declared themselves the true representatives of the
French people, equal to the king, and they called their body the
National Assembly. They proposed the formation of a constitutional
monarchy, and they claimed to have the overwhelming support of the
country. If they did not get their way, they would make sure the
government would be unable to raise the necessary taxes. At one point,
as the king grew furious at this form of blackmail, he ordered the Third
Estate to disband from their meeting place, and they refused,
disobeying a royal decree. Never had any French king witnessed such
insubordination from the lower classes.
As he faced a growing uprising throughout the country, Louis
sensed the urgency of nipping the problem in the bud. He decided to
forget any attempts at conciliation and instead resort to force. He
called in the army to establish order in Paris and elsewhere. But on
July 13 messengers from Paris relayed some disturbing news: the
Parisians, anticipating Louis’s use of the military, were quickly arming
themselves, looting military stockades. The French troops that had
moved in to quell the rebellion were unreliable, many of them refusing
to fire on their compatriots. The following day, a vast contingent of
Parisians marched on the Bastille, the royal prison in Paris that was a
symbol of the most oppressive practices of the monarchy, and they
took control of it.
Paris was in the hands of the people now, and there was nothing
Louis could do. He watched with horror as the National Assembly, still
meeting in Versailles, quickly voted to eliminate the various privileges
enjoyed by the nobility and clergy. In the name of the people, they
voted to take over the Catholic Church and auction off to the public the
vast lands that it owned. They went even further, proclaiming that
henceforth all French citizens were equal. The monarchy would be
allowed to survive, but the people and the king were to share power.
In the following weeks, as the courtiers, shocked and terrified by
these events, quickly fled Versailles to safe regions or to other
countries, the king could now feel the full brunt of what had happened
in the past few months. He wandered the halls of the palace, virtually
alone. The paintings and august symbols of Louis XIV stared back at
him in mockery of all that he had allowed under his rule.

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Somehow he had to retake control of France, and the only way to do
so was to lean even more on the military, finding those regiments that
had remained loyal to him. In mid-September he recalled the Flanders
Regiment—containing some of the best soldiers in the country and
renowned for its royalist sympathies—to Versailles. On the evening of
October 1, the king’s personal guard decided to host a banquet in
honor of the Flanders Regiment. All of the courtiers who had remained
in the palace, along with the king and the queen, attended the banquet.
The soldiers became drunk. They shouted cheers to the king and
oaths to the monarchy. They sang ballads ridiculing the French people
in the raunchiest terms. They grabbed handfuls of the tricolor badges
and ribbons that symbolized the revolution and trampled them with
their boots. The king and the queen, so despondent of late, took this all
in with undisguised delight—it was a taste of years gone by, when the
very sight of the royal couple inspired such displays of affection. But
news of what had transpired at this banquet quickly spread to Paris,
and it caused outrage and panic. Parisians of all classes suspected that
the king was planning some sort of countercoup. They imagined the
nobility returning under Louis’s command and exacting revenge on the
French people.
Within days, the king learned that thousands of Parisians were now
marching on Versailles. They were armed and dragging cannons. He
thought of escaping with his family but hesitated. Soon it was too late,
as the mob arrived. On the morning of October 6, a group of citizens
penetrated into the palace, killing everyone in their path. They
demanded that Louis and his family be escorted back to Paris, so that
the French citizens could keep an eye on him and ensure his loyalty to
the new order.
Louis had no choice: he and his traumatized family piled into a
single carriage. As they made their way to Paris, surrounded by the
crowd, Louis could see the heads of the king’s personal guard paraded
on long pikes. What shocked him even more was the sight of so many
men and women surrounding the carriage, dressed in rags, thinned by
hunger, pressing their faces to the window and swearing at him and
the queen in the vilest language. He could not recognize his own
subjects. These were not the French people he had known. They must
be outside agitators, brought in by enemies to destroy the monarchy.
Somehow the world had gone mad.

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In Paris the king, his family, and the few courtiers who had
remained with them were housed in the Tuileries, a royal residence
that had been uninhabited for over a hundred years.
Within a week of his arrival in Paris, the king received a visit from a
strange man whose face and manner frightened him. It was Georges-
Jacques Danton, now one of the leaders of the French Revolution. On
behalf of the French people, he had come to welcome the king to Paris.
He explained that he had been a member of the King’s Council, and he
reassured the king that the people were grateful for his submission to
their will and that there was still an important part for him to play as a
monarch who swore allegiance to a new constitution.
Louis could barely listen. He was transfixed by the man’s enormous
head, by the strange outfit he wore (black satin breeches over white
silk stockings, and buckled shoes, a mix of fashion styles Louis had
never seen before), and by his whole manner, his fast way of talking,
the lack of awe and respect in the king’s presence. He bowed graciously
before the king, but he refused to kiss his hand, quite a breach of
protocol. So this was a revolutionary, a man of the people? Louis had
never met such a fellow, and he found the experience decidedly
unpleasant.
—
During the summer months of 1789, Danton had largely supported the
decisions of the National Assembly, but he had remained wary of the
aristocracy and wanted to make sure they had permanently lost their
privileges. The nobility was the source of the country’s misery, and the
French must never forget this. He had become one of the principal
fomenters against the upper classes, and as such he had earned the
mistrust of the more moderate and bourgeois leaders of the revolution,
who wanted to go slowly. To them, Danton was like a ranting,
monstrous ogre, and they had excluded him from their social circles
and any official position in the new government under formation.
Feeling ostracized and perhaps recalling his own peasant roots,
Danton had come to increasingly identify with the sans-culottes
(“without breeches”), members of the lowest classes in France and the
most revolutionary in spirit. As the news of the scandalous behavior of
the Flanders Regiment on October 1 had reached Paris, Danton had

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been one of the key agitators for the march on Versailles, and with its
success he had become the leader of the Cordeliers. And it was in that
capacity that he had paid a visit to the Tuileries, as much to discern the
king’s degree of support for the new constitution as to welcome him.
Danton could not help but recall the coronation he had attended
over fourteen years earlier, with all of its pomp, for despite everything
that had happened in the last few months, the king seemed bent on re-
creating the protocol and ceremony of Versailles. He wore his royal
outfit, with its sash and various medals attached to his coat. He
insisted on the old formalities, and he kept his attendants in their
elaborate uniforms. It was all so empty, so disconnected from what was
going on. Danton was polite. He still felt a strange sympathy for the
king, but now, as he scrutinized him, all he could see was a relic of the
past. He doubted the king’s allegiance to the new order. He left the
meeting more certain than ever that the French monarchy had become
obsolete.
In the months that followed, the king professed his loyalty to the
new constitution, but Danton suspected that Louis was playing a
double game, still plotting to bring the monarchy and nobility back to
power. A coalition of armies from other countries in Europe was now
waging open war against the revolution, determined to rescue the king
and restore the old order. And Danton felt certain that the king was in
communication with them.
Then in June of 1791 came the most startling news of all: the king
and his family had somehow escaped from Paris in a carriage. A few
days later they were caught. It would all have been rather comical if it
hadn’t been so alarming. The family members had been dressed like
everyday members of the bourgeoisie out on holiday, but they had
ridden in a splendid carriage that did not match their outfits and that
called attention to itself. They had been recognized, captured, and
returned to the capital.
Now Danton sensed that his moment had arrived. The liberals and
moderates in the revolution were trying to maintain that the king was
innocent, that he had been duped into escaping or even abducted. They
feared what would happen to France if the monarchy was abolished
and how the foreign armies, now within the country’s borders, would
react if anything happened to the king. But to Danton this was absurd.
They were merely postponing the inevitable. The monarchy had lost its

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meaning and purpose; the king had revealed himself to be a traitor,
and they must not be afraid to say so. It was time, he proclaimed, for
France to declare itself a republic and get rid of the monarchy once and
for all.
His call for a republic began to resonate, particularly among the